Portrait of a Girl (32 page)

“It isn’t Italy. Not your homeland, Achille. Aren’t you homesick for your country and for a wife who will make a home for you there?”

Achille Robustelli was glad that his mother had touched on this sensitive subject of her own accord and immediately took up the point. “Right, Mama. I’ve met a woman here who will give me this home. I would like to introduce her to you. I’m glad you’re here just now. Because the season will be over soon, and then I’d like to bring her to Bergamo with me this winter.”

“Up here?” Signora Robustelli was incredulous. “You found someone up here? Is she Italian? Will she go back to Italy with you? After all, you don’t want to stay up here forever. One day you’ll manage a grand hotel in Italy.” She missed seeing him in the rakish uniform he had worn as an officer, which had looked so good on him. But Achille would reach the highest rung possible in his profession.

“She’s from Maloja, Mama. But she speaks Italian like most of the people from this region. Her dialect is very close to the Italian language.” The most important thing, he told himself, was to keep calm.

“Dialect?” Signora Robustelli asked, as if she had just sat down on a needle. “I hope that the accent isn’t strong. You know how important I considered it in bringing you up for you always to speak perfect, elegant Italian. I certainly hope your children will not speak a
dialect
.”

Achille took a deep breath. She was here, and he couldn’t change that. Unfortunately, she had appeared at the least favorable moment. The smartest thing would be to avoid any arguments and to get rid of her as soon as possible.

“We don’t have any children as yet,” he said in a calm, clear tone. “I’m sure you wouldn’t like it either if we did, right? And if it’s all right with you, we’ll go now to have a cup of coffee together with Andrina. And then I’ll have someone take you to your hotel in Sils-Maria, because I have my hands full. Tomorrow there’ll be a Venetian Ball here, and I have to make sure that everything functions properly.”

Signora Robustelli nodded, reluctant but resigned. Of course, she’d hoped to have the evening meal with her son, but, well, her Achille was a very busy man. Naturally, you had to take that into consideration.

Andrina had exchanged her day off with Clara, one of the other chambermaids, so that she could prepare for her first meeting with Achille’s mother. She intended to wear her Sunday dress, the one she wore when she went dancing with Robustelli. And she had a terrific idea. Luca had mentioned a couple of times that the
straniera
was wearing a golden locket when they found her in the mountains. Andrina had never seen Nika wear it, but she must keep the jewel hidden somewhere in her room. And for this one important day, Andrina thought she would borrow Nika’s locket and then immediately put it back in its place without her having noticed anything.

She knew Nika’s room was never locked, and when nobody answered her knock, she slipped into the room without being seen by anyone. She lifted the mattress, didn’t find it there; opened the top drawer of the bureau, took out the black woolen shawl, discovered the locket, and was out of the room in no time.

Such a valuable piece of jewelry! How did Nika happen to have it? And why did she hide it so carefully? Had she stolen the piece? Maybe it was the real reason for her having run away? No one really knew anything about her.

Andrina passed a finger over the engraved rose, the red jewel in the middle. She couldn’t contain her curiosity, opened the locket, but didn’t find a picture in it, no jewel, only a small, folded piece of paper. She couldn’t make out the words. Disappointed, she put the paper back in the locket, placed the chain around her neck, and opened the uppermost button on her dress so that one could see the locket. She pinched her cheeks to give them a pink blush and waited for Achille to call for her.

Emma Schobinger had rarely felt as certain about a decision as now. She had decided she was going to St. Moritz at the first possible moment. And she was going there without her husband. Instead, she asked her cousin Frieda to accompany her. She had made an appointment on the telephone with Dr. Bernhard. She was beside herself. To dissolve the engagement! Bad enough that Adrian’s family had distanced themselves on the grounds of Mathilde’s having tuberculosis. What an affront to her and Franz, and of course Mathilde too. But still, Adrian was sticking by his fiancée, and she assumed that his parents would one day become reconciled to his decision. He was, after all, their only son and the inheritor of the bank. And now this had to happen.

Who had put such silly notions into the child’s head? Didn’t she, Emma, have a bad feeling right from the outset about having Betsy accompany Mathilde? Betsy was absolutely the wrong example for a curious young woman not yet sure of herself. And the mountains. Emma held her forehead as if she had a headache. If you stayed up there too long, you’d probably go mad. But all this was reversible, once she had Mathilde back home with her.

“It’s very simple, Mama. I don’t love him,” Mathilde said.

“Oh, so you don’t love him. And when did you discover that?”

“I’ve felt it for quite a long time, but I wasn’t sure enough to talk about it before I came here. Wel
l . . .
actually, I never loved him,” Mathilde admitted meekly. She had been utterly surprised by her mother’s visit, an effect Emma Schobinger had carefully anticipated.

“Well.” With an ungracious gesture, Emma Schobinger sent the nurse who had just come in with a thermometer out of the room. “I want to say something to you,” she went on. “It’s nice to love the man you marry. But after a few years it all takes on a different aspect, and by then you realize that you’re still married.”

“But Mama,” Mathilde said, shocked, “do you mean to say that you don’t love Papa anymore?”

“Yes, I do, but in a different way. But we’re not talking about your father and me now, we’re discussing your behavior. And that, my dear child, is unacceptable.” Even though Emma Schobinger wasn’t tall, she seemed just then imposing and implacable.

Mathilde wondered whether she should be honest and mention Edward. But then she thought it would be better to go step-by-step and not to mention anything too early. For that might have an even more negative effect on the situation.

“Is there another man involved?” her mother asked as if she had read Mathilde’s mind. She wasn’t naïve. “Adrian mentioned a certain Edward who comes to visit you. More often, in fact, than is appropriate for an engaged young woman.”

“Oh, that’s nothing,” said Mathilde who had decided to fight for her point as vigorously as her mother. The engagement had to be dissolved first, before Edward became involved. And so she said casually, “I hope I’m permitted to have visitors. The doctors all say that loneliness doesn’t help recovery.”

“Rubbish,” Emma Schobinger said.

The blood rushed to Mathilde’s head so that her curls looked as though an electric current had passed through them. She took a deep breath. “Up here, I’ve come to realize, and it’s partly because of my illness, that I don’t want to spend my life with Adrian. I know that there’s nothing wrong with him, Mother, that he’d be a perfect son-in-law and husband.” She drew herself up again and forced herself to look directly at her mother, “But I want to be in love with the man I marry.”

Emma Schobinger got up. She knew that Mathilde liked to involve her in long drawn-out discussions. “None of this matters,” she said tersely. “You are going to marry Adrian. And leave your illness out of it. No dramatic fever please. Dr. Bernhard told me an hour ago that he is very pleased with your state of health. He sees no reason why you wouldn’t be cured and released in a couple of months.”

“I won’t marry Adrian,” Mathilde said in a firm tone of voice. “And certainly not just because
you
want me to.”

Emma was shocked. It wasn’t possible that her daughter had lost all respect for her mother. Mathilde wasn’t doing herself a favor with such impertinences. “Just so you know,” she said coolly as she was about to leave, “I have asked Dr. Bernhard to give me some addresses of tuberculosis sanatoriums near Zurich.”

Andrina was just what Signora Robustelli had expected: the sort of woman who wasn’t at all appropriate for Achille. Pretty, buxom, vain, and with a tendency to recklessness. A woman who would ensnare a responsible man and then ruin him.

It was obvious that the young woman was ambitious. That might have been a positive trait, but certain details bothered the signora. A young woman with good judgment didn’t get all dressed up like this for her first meeting with the family of the man she was hoping to marry. The girl was wearing, to put it mildly, a not-very-tasteful Sunday dress on a normal workday, as well as a valuable piece of jewelry that fit neither with the dress nor its wearer. Signora Robustelli didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but this just didn’t look good.

Surprisingly, the conversation began to falter not because of Signora Robustelli, but because of Achille. All this time Andrina had been polite and attentive, and the signora was even beginning to like her because she didn’t talk as much nonsense as the signora had expected. On the other hand, Achille seemed not to be paying attention. The conversation meandered on for a while without any high or low points. Andrina poured Achille and the signora more coffee. Then she suggested that she leave.

“Achille, I’m sure you’d like to stay a while alone with your mother. You haven’t seen each other for a long time. If you will excuse me, Signora Robustelli, I was very happy that you were prepared to meet me.”

She got up. Achille’s mother gave her a point for politeness, but her son, surprisingly, said in an unusually brusque tone, “Wait, Andrina, I’ll go outside with my mother and call her a carriage. Stay here till I come back. I won’t be long.”

Andrina nodded obediently. She was surprised. What was happening? He wasn’t himself; he was different. They had drunk coffee in his office, and she now sat down again. It didn’t feel right. She didn’t sit in his chair behind the desk, which is what she would have liked to do, but she lingered close enough to get a look at the letters that lay there, opened. But like most of the people in the village, she hadn’t gotten very far along with reading, and before she could decipher anything, Robustelli had come back into the room.

“So,” he said, closing the door behind him. “Now give me the necklace you’re wearing and tell me where you got it. I’ve never seen you wear it, and it would surprise me to know that it belonged to your mother.”

Yet that’s just what she had almost told him. Instead, she said nothing, just handed him the locket. She had never seen him this stern. She had just wanted to look pretty for his mother. Why was he so upset?

Achille examined the locket carefully. “This is a coat of arms,” he said. “A family’s coat of arms that I’ve seen before. If I’m not mistaken, it’s the coat of arms of an old established Venetian family. How in heaven’s name did you get it?”

Andrina had an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach. The
straniera
had landed her in a real fix. She had destroyed everything, Andrina’s entire life, her future. It was obvious that Achille was angry. Now he probably wouldn’t marry her, and it was Nika’s fault. Andrina stubbornly refused to say anything, pursed her lips.